STRENGTH IN SOLITUDE: Jeremy, shown with canine companion Spokane, quietly works the 600 block of State Street. He blames the young urban travelers for ruining State Street for everyone. “When you build up in groups, you cause a problem,” he said. “When you stay by yourself, people like you.”

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Just one week after the Santa Barbara City Council agreed to budget an additional $300,000 a year to beef up law enforcement presence on State Street to keep aggressive panhandlers and unruly street people in check, the council’s Ordinance Committee explored a wide range of proposals designed to curb aggressive panhandlers and give City Hall a new enforcement tool to deal with public urination and defecation.

Leading the charge were councilmembers Frank Hotchkiss and Randy Rowse, who stressed they were targeting offensive behavior with the new ordinances but not any groups in particular. It’s clear, however, the abiding issue for State Street merchants and visitors is what law enforcement refers to as “young urban travelers,” or YUTs. They blow through town in successive waves and, while here, congregate in clusters ​— ​with dogs and backpacks in tow ​— ​on lower State Street sidewalks and benches.

In contrast to street people a couple of blocks north ​— ​who typically have longer tenure in Santa Barbara ​— ​the YUTs are more prone to verbal aggression and other forms of pack behavior that make passersby uncomfortable. Among the measures under consideration is a proposal to prohibit groups from “congregating in a manner that blocks the free movement of pedestrian traffic on our downtown sidewalks.” Another would restrict the hours anyone can sit or lie on the sidewalk.

Current law bans sitting and lying between 7 a.m. - 9 p.m. If the new measure is approved, such behavior would be prohibited 7 a.m. - 2 a.m. City Attorney Ariel Calonne cautioned committee members they could be violating the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That problem might arise, he noted, if there are “insufficient shelter beds” and the city has effectively criminalized “sitting, lying, or sleeping at night while being involuntarily homeless.”

In addition, the committee considered measures that would limit the amount of time any one person could spend on a given downtown bench and tighten laws banning street peddling of any sort. Such changes could effectively call into question the legality of many street musicians, who typically collect money in guitar cases or hats placed on the sidewalk. One change likely to pass is a proposal to expand the space “active” panhandlers have to maintain between themselves and people waiting in line near ATM machines. The current ordinance requires a 25-foot buffer; the new language would expand that to 80 feet.

For the past year, it turns out, Santa Barbara has found itself without an ordinance enabling it to take action against people who urinate and defecate in public. That’s because local courts began interpreting the laws in such a way that breaking them meant filing misdemeanor charges rather than infractions. Because the city attorney lacks legal authority to prosecute anything but infractions, he was forced to ask the District Attorney to file misdemeanors for public elimination. Because those facing such charges are entitled by law to jury trials, the DA has not been inclined to do so. “No one thought it would be a good use of resources to have a jury trial for urinating in public,” Calonne said. In the meantime, city cops have cobbled together a makeshift solution, charging violators under a state law banning littering.

The plethora of new measures designed to discourage obnoxious behavior by street people comes just one week after the City Council voted to spend an additional $150,000 to hire an additional cop. In so doing, the councilmembers made it abundantly clear they expected Police Chief Cam Sanchez to assign this officer to State Street to reassure tourists and residents uncomfortable at the prospect of going downtown. In addition, the council approved spending $150,000 more to pay for private security personnel to patrol State Street, especially the 500, 600, and 700 blocks.

Already city cops have stepped up their presence on those blocks. Between March 10 and April 6, they made 18 felony arrests, 47 misdemeanor arrests, and issued 596 misdemeanor citations. Hotchkiss expressed interest in exploring Santa Maria’s ordinance that bans profane behavior. Calonne suggested that vulgar language alone was insufficient for police intervention, pointing out that the city’s existing ordinance already bans any language that might incite “immediate violent response.”

Calonne warned the committee from taking any action that could be construed as targeting any particular group. Likewise, he cautioned that panhandling is deemed by the courts to be free speech, so any restrictions in the time, manner, or place had to be sufficiently open-ended to allow ample avenues for other options. No advocates for homeless rights spoke or were in attendance. The matter will go back to the Ordinance Committee one more time. After that, it would be referred to the council as a whole for action.

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Wednesday , June 11, while walking along State St in the block with Pierre La Fond's and the large RiteAid [CVS? I dunno] drugstore my nostrils detected HEAVY stench of old urine and fresh feces. No dog stools evident. There were several young urban travelers there, and heck, where DO they piss and poop?? The YUTs could go up to the public restrooms near the parking structure, couple blocks up State but... unfortunately, this really is a problem and c'mon City Council, do something more specific, eh? You can blather forever, mayor, about left-lanes on the 101, how about doing something about the stink here in town?

c'mon folks, just give them unlimited California Fresh cards and free dog food for their pit bulls and leave'em alone-maybe unlimited tattoo vouchers would sweeten the pot even more so that they feel even more welcome...

Ya there is a connection, they all spent their youth in a post 9/11 prison camp aka school.

But why fix the actual problems when we can just make more laws and throw them in prison? Who cares if they come out in 5 or 10 years a hardened criminal?

We should just take anybody who is prone to commit crimes - all of the homeless, people on welfare, minorities, illicit drug users, anyone under 21 who has ever had an alcoholic drink and put them all in FEMA prison camps so the rest of us employed white folks can finally live in peace while we send drones over to countries on the other side of the globe and blow up villages for our energy needs.

Ya there is a connection, they all spent their youth in a post 9/11 prison camp aka school.

But why fix the actual problems when we can just make more laws and throw them in prison? Who cares if they come out in 5 or 10 years a hardened criminal?

We should just take anybody who is prone to commit crimes - all of the homeless, people on welfare, minorities, illicit drug users, anyone under 21 who has ever had an alcoholic drink and put them all in FEMA prison camps so the rest of us employed white folks can finally live in peace while we send drones over to countries on the other side of the globe and blow up villages for our energy needs.

I don't feel any bunched panties... The democrats are telling us constantly how Obama has made the economy whole again and that jobs are everywhere and yet we are inundated by able bodied young adults that are not working and on the public dole. Society was NEVER intending to care for it's worthless, just it's HELPLESS. These travelers are hardly helpless.

These are NOT "young urban travelers" in any way whatsoever. THEY ARE BUMS. Call a spade a spade please!Loonywoony, lay off the conspiracy bullcrap for once, bums have existed LONG before 9/11, as has the educational system.Sure, bums were usually of an older variety, but when the grunge era victim mentality went mainstream the young and restless decided to cash in on it. Simple as that.This is the generation that votes for free stuff, well, free, as long as somebody else is paying for it.These are nothing but bums out to get a free trip to sunny CA and stay financed by anyone but them.They are able bodied, young and strong, but won't lift a finger to help themselves because after all, the rest of the world is supposed to care for them. BULLCRAP!Make it as financially uncomfortable for them as possible, they'll leave. These are the modern day cockroaches, time to exterminate.

Being a bum is a perfectly honorable way to do nothing and not annoy people. The travelers, on the other hand, delight in making butt heads of themselves, blocking pedestrians, and attempting to get people to take notice of them.

Loonytoons: "I actually give them money, just to annoy people like you."

We're glad yo give em' money, just to see people like you become 1 of them. Your loss, not mine or our's!Can just see it now, loonywoony, standing in a throng of bums, preaching his truther conspiracies to the dumb and impressionable while blaming either "the man" or "the system" for his shortcomings. Has the makings of a reality show or sitcom. LOOK, CHEMTRAILS!

In what way are any of the above comments helpful?Ants, seagulls and bums (all respond in the same way) find a feeding bin.The difference is, bums may not be exterminated as BlahBlah suggests, nor may they be denied their Constitutional Rights of Liberty, Speech, Travel, and Religion as those annoying donors (like Loonpt) propagate.Shall Santa Barbara accept the colorful people as part of its quaint attraction to the wealthy of the world? Only the bunisess owners say, "No!" The locals stay away and the tourist either turn their head or deliver a dollar. They don't care.But what about the faint pee, poop, and showerless stench wafting up from the huddled crowd of YUTs. Isn't that a public nuisance; stench?Sounds like a job for the City Attorney not the City Council. Laws are in place. Enforce them. Lack of personal hygiene (Nuisance) is the Cause of Action that will either encourage the homeless travelers to shower and clean or move on to another camping site.

"For the past year, it turns out, Santa Barbara has found itself without an ordinance enabling it to take action against people who urinate and defecate in public. That’s because local courts began interpreting the laws in such a way that breaking them meant filing misdemeanor charges rather than infractions." Maybe it is time for said courts to rethink? Call them infractions, let the City Attorney prosecute, and simplify the matter?

As for the YUTs, what do you expect when a college education leaves you with $40,000 in debt that can never be discharged by bankruptcy, and no job? This society is eating its young. Any wonder they are restless?

I suggest that a nonprofit organization be established. The purpose of the nonprofit is to feed the restless travelers. The organization will feed them oranges, apples, bananas, yogurt, fish, and nuts. Salads can be made with lettuce, spinach, broccoli, carrots, and tomato. It can whip up a garlic avocado dish with chips, tortillas and bread. etc. etc.

Too expensive? ok, Uh, uh a, A soup kitchen will boil some pasta, slop some corn-syrup sauce on it, and bag some bagels to go.

LFAGR: When you say "make a deposit at the poles" do you mean discharging bodily fluids at metal devices sticking out of the ground? Do you mean Polish people? Did you mean to write (or do you not know how to spell) "polls"?

Engage the young. Talk to them, even if it feels uncomfortable. Especially if it feels uncomfortable. They may stink, they may be obnoxious and even a bit scary, but they are our children, and they need adult guidance - along with the occasional firm reminder that you shouldn't defecate where you sleep.

yup, it's the evil free market system, if only we could have pride instilling socialism...I expect them to do what the vast majority of able bodied young do and that is to not live like an animal on the middle of the sidewalk.

"Expecting" decent behavior is not going to solve the problem. Telling them why you expect it, asking them why they are showing such disrespect for themselves and our community, treating them like people with the attendant rights and responsibilities would be more helpful.We the citizens, not the cops or local officials are going to have to solve this. As for socialism, that has been tried and failed, but letting unfettered market forces turn our kids into indentured servants is clearly not working either. Let's set the labels aside and try to come up with common goals, shall we?

Unfettered market forces.....really??? So these kids work in electronics? Because that's the only sector of our market that isn't completely regulated and overtaxed by government.. What "unfettered market forces" are turning these kids into indentured servants??

If you're talking about student loan debt, the government guarantees student loans for education, so kids have unlimited access to money to pay for college - this causes Universities to be able to jack up prices year after year and then the the students use the government loans to bid up the pricing of college tuition and student housing as unlimited funds are always available. Kids used to be able to work part time and work over the summer and pay for college with little or no help, but now that is impossible because government loans have bid up the price of tuition so high nobody can afford it and practically everybody has to get a loan and become an indentured servant... And you want to blame that on "unfettered capitalism"??

Tell me what else you want to blame on "unfettered capitalism" cuz last time I checked nothing remotely like that has existed for well over a century..

Let's look at how horrible things were a century ago before the Federal Reserve:

Leave it to a truther high on chemtrails who is an adderall enabler to make this lazy behavior by these bums into some sort of government conspiracy.Hey, loony, the illuminati called this morning, they want to know if you can hook them up with some adderall!KICK THE BUMS OUT! They're NOT from here, they're a problem and besides, loony supports/enables them.

I think that in the 1930's we had a bunch of bums rooming around the good old US of A. That was during the Great Depression.

Now in the 2010's we have the Great Recession; replete with yuts.

Give it a decade or another war and they will, like then, move on.

In the meantime, Santa Barbara will continue spray washing the red brick walks.

If we took one first year cop's salary without over time ($90,000), we could hire 7 yuts at a rate of $1071.43 per month salary (minus taxes) to shoo the other kids away.

We can give them a script that says, "Why are you showing such disrespect for yourself and our community?"

If our 7 hired guns treat them like people with the attendant rights and responsibilities, then certainly the yuts will clearly understand how hurtful they are being to us and our community.

If the yuts do not shoo themselves away because of the shame they suddenly feel, then we give our 7 hired guns a broom and a dust bin on a stick (like the ones used at Disneyland) and have them constantly follow the non-hired yuts around sweeping and cleaning up after them. Eventually, the yuts will leave, because the hired gun yuts will have worked themselves out of a job because they did it so well.

The City Government should trade one cop for seven converted yuts. That's a good plan. There, next problem!

loony, those are nice pictures; all the happy people and cute little cars scurrying about. Those were the good old days. Before the Federal banks and IRS got involved.

Hey, did you know that HJ Res 104 is going to repeal the 16th Amendment? Finally, Congress has figured out that too much regulation by the Banking System and the Internal Revenue System shuts down our economy. Albeit, it took 100 years to do it.

Americans are hard to control. We like our liberty.

So, just like prohibition was repealed, so too will regulation be repealed.

Enough with the wannabe anarchist theory, the fact is THESE ARE BUMS. Kick em' out, they do nothing good for anyone.What's it going to take, 1 of them assaulting somebody? Oops! Actually ALREADY happened when that "Slim" dude sexually assaulted that dumb girl who thought it would be a good idea to go to a party with these idiots.Or maybe a law abiding citizen taking 1 or a few of them out in a forceful manner?This is a brazenly lazy element that is making a mockery of the SB City Council. Come on, grow a pair and boot the scum.

One person assaults somebody and suddenly all of the hundreds of YUTs who have come through town are all responsible for this ONE person's actions. This is why nobody actually thinks your opinion is reasonable. Why can't you treat people as individuals? One of the YUTs posted above and said they do jobs on craigslist, so many of them are helping out the community by putting in their share of work so they can eat and have some minimal amount of comfort.

I actually have a great amount of respect for these people that they are able to live on so little and yet many seem to be pretty satisfied with their lives. Not everybody needs a full time job, a big house, a car and a bunch of furniture to tie them down, some people are more happy traveling about. Unfortunately I think the economy has something to do with it, for some this may be their best option.

If you have a problem with homeless people pooping then there are plenty of solutions to the problem other than kicking them out of town.

LOL loons, coming from a TRUTHER, as well as an adderall enabler, you really don't have much to say, yet say a lot of NOTHING.Now get to CVS and get your girl some more adderall before you become seen as just another wacky truther. That's easy to happen once the drugs wear off.

Well blah it is clear that you aren't even attempting to be intellectually honest in your interactions here, so i don't know why you expect anybody to believe you.

Yesterday I sent you a personal message completely disproving your accusations about being an adderall enabler, but clearly you don't actually care about the thruth all you want to do is be name caller. I'm not sure why the Indy continues to allow you to post with your incessant name calling and false personal accusations.

Please refrain from discussing my medical history or that of anybody associated with me unless it is directly related to the discussion as it is unnecessary and you are twisting it into something that it isn't.

They actually found that aluminum foil increases the conductivity of the type of electromagnetic waves that would be used for mind control, so wearing a tinfoil hat would be counterproductive if I believed that the government was going to use mind control against me. However I'm pretty sure the entire notion of tin foil caps came from the establishment simply trying to make their enemies look silly. But go ahead and keep propagating nonsense.

Cloud seeding, as a US military research project, began as early as the 1830s, according to Colby College professor, James R. Fleming. [26] Verifiably successful rainmaking attempts did not occur until 1915.

1915 To end a prolonged drought, San Diego hired reputed rainmaker Charles Hatfield, who claimed that the evaporation of his secret chemical brew atop wooden towers could attract clouds. San Diego was rewarded with a 17-day deluge that totaled 28 inches. The deadly downpour washed out more than 100 bridges, made roads impassable over a huge area, destroyed communications lines, dozens died and thousands were left homeless. [27]"

1943 “The first operational use of chaff (aluminium strips which are precisely cut to a quarter of the radar’s wavelength) took place in July 1943, when Hamburg was subjected to a devastating bombing raid. The radar screens were cluttered with reflections from the chaff and the air defence was, in effect, completely blinded.” [28]

1946 General Electric’s Vincent Schaefer dropped six pounds of dry ice into a cold cloud over Greylock Peak in the Berkshires, causing an “explosive” growth of three miles in the cloud. [29]

1949 Project Cirrus: Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir and General Electric researcher Vincent Schaefer fed ten ounces of silver iodide into a blowtorch apparatus and brought down 320 billion gallons of rain across half of New Mexico from a desert near Albuquerque. [31]

1950 Harvard meteorologist Wallace Howell seeded New York City skies with dry ice and silver iodide smoke, filling the city’s reservoirs to near capacity. [32]

1952 The UK’s Operation Cumulus resulted in 250 times the normal amount of rainfall, killing dozens and destroying landscapes. [33]

1962-1983 Operation Stormfury, a hurricane modification program, had some success in reducing winds by up to 30%. [34]

1966-1972 Project Intermediary Compatriot (later called Pop Eye) successfully seeded clouds in Laos. The technique became part of military actions in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos from 1967 to 1972. Initially revealed by Jack Anderson in the Washington Post, 18 Mar 1971. [35]

It is speculated that both of these fish die offs resulted as a HAARP activity and they were actually predicting an earthquake around May 21-23, an earthquake which never happened..... but something else did happen, didn't it?

If you want to see a real case of mind control with nano-technology and subcutaneous implants, check out the Superior Court in Santa Barbara, Honorable Judge Geck presiding. Case # 1402957 Cain v. Sansum Clinic, et. al.

The following is from an expert witness: "Further, I declare that the tantamount clinical issue yet to be resolved definitively is why plaintiff has sophisticated scientific test results via the electromagnetic Technical Survaillance Counter Measures, TSCM, performed by investigator M. Kidder identifying at various mapped loci of his body an unnatural tissue function. That function is the unique capability of local tissue to receive and process specific electromagnetic signals that are discoverable externally, particularly radio frequencies in bandwidths allocated and licensed by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC)"

Research genius? So taking what's available from the Freedom of Information Act & embellishing it is genius? Looks like the blogs are overrun by drug addled truthers.But back to reality. Kick the bums out before somebody gets their butt kicked, mainly 1 of them.I know for a fact that if 1 of those clowns came up to me in an obnoxious, threatening manner, boom, boom, out go the lights for them.The bums rely on the average folks being fearful of them to get their way, they're wannabe anarchist wimps on holiday. Kick them out.

King Jeremy and his dirty,punching bag dog. This guy has been seen closed fisting his "companion" . He begs all day every day. He as the look of either an alcoholic/pill popper. But every town has their favorite homebums.